


To Hold as One's Own

by celeste9



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Character Study, Established Relationship, F/M, Gift Giving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:35:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6297409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes Natasha wonders if this lack of sentimentality is a character flaw she should work on, a remnant of the Red Room’s conditioning. Don’t feel, don’t love, don’t form attachments. Phil holds onto his collections because every item means something to him. Natasha doesn’t have anything that means something to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Hold as One's Own

**Author's Note:**

> Fandom stocking ficlet for enochiansigils.

Phil Coulson has a lot of _stuff._ ‘Stuff’ is the word Natasha uses when she’s feeling generous, as mostly she feels that Phil’s beloved possessions would more accurately be termed ‘junk’.

Phil is a collector. Comic books, dolls (beg pardon, _action figures_ ), basically anything that has Captain America’s face on it. Or his shield. Or whatever, anything remotely related to Captain America. He has tie-in novels and convention T-shirts and autographs. His DVD collection is so large that Natasha has trouble believing he’s actually watched all of it. Quite frankly Natasha didn’t know someone could accumulate so much in one relatively short life until the first time she’d seen his apartment.

It’s endearing, she supposes. At any rate she thinks his secret geek life is cute. (Also amazing for blackmail and teasing purposes. Not that Natasha ever engages in such behavior.)

Natasha, on the other hand, hangs on to little. Until she joined S.H.I.E.L.D. she never stayed in one place long enough to merit keeping non-essentials. She certainly doesn’t have any childhood mementoes or photographs. Whenever this subject comes up Phil gets this horrible sad look in his eyes, which Natasha ignores. Her childhood – or lack of one – was what it was and there’s no use dwelling on it.

She has a lot of clothes, she supposes. Clothes are useful for undercover work, and she has outfits in her closet that fit identities that aren’t her own, outfits she never wears as Natasha. Clint claims that the number of pairs of shoes she owns makes him want to cry, but Natasha considers shoes an indulgence she owes herself.

Phil buys her shoes often, as gifts, as apologies, as impulse ‘I was thinking of you’ offerings. He has excellent taste. Natasha supposes this is likely because he imagines how the shoes will look on her, how the heels will elongate her calves.

So she has shoes, anyway. But her apartment lacks the knickknacks and clutter that most people seem to have in America. The sparseness suits her, she thinks, and anyway she rarely spends time in it. She is so often away on missions, or sleeping at Phil’s, that it hardly seems to matter.

Sometimes she wonders if this lack of sentimentality is a character flaw she should work on, a remnant of the Red Room’s conditioning. Don’t feel, don’t love, don’t form attachments. Phil holds onto his collections because every item means something to him. Natasha doesn’t have anything that means something to her.

Not anything that can be owned, anyway.

Phil likes to go to antique shops and flea markets, anywhere he might stumble upon someone else’s discarded collectible. Natasha likes to go with him because his enthusiasm is, well, adorable. They often make a date out of it, a few hours spent digging through the remnants of strangers’ lives and a meal out. Clint laughs at them, calls them an old married couple, but Natasha reminds him that he’s the one with a wife and kids waiting for him at home.

On a day out with Phil, Natasha holds up a Barbie dressed like Cinderella. “She’ll look nice next to Cap, don’t you think?”

“Not exactly what I was looking for, but you keep trying, honey,” Phil says, grinning.

She rolls her eyes at him. “Oh, one doll’s the same as another,” she says, because Phil launching into his lecture on how his dolls aren’t actually dolls never stops being hilarious.

She walks down an aisle, idly passing the tables until something catches her eye. It’s a rounded celadon vase, with a delicate patterning of leaves adorning it. It’s lovely, the sort of item that belongs as a centerpiece on a grand table, drawing the eye to it. Natasha touches her fingertips to it and imagines herself in another life, where she might have chosen a vase like this to decorate her home. Another life where she was just a woman making a home, choosing beautiful things to surround herself with.

Phil almost startles her when he speaks, having come up beside her. “Ready to go? Or did you want something?”

“No,” Natasha says, with one last look at the vase. “There’s nothing I need.”

“Needing isn’t really the point,” Phil says, but he walks out with her.

Five nights later Natasha walks into her apartment after a quick trip to Mexico and knows immediately that someone’s been in there. Gone now, but Natasha always knows.

She walks slowly down the hall, and it’s in the sitting room that she sees it. The vase is sitting on the small table beside her armchair, as if proudly on display.

Natasha smiles as she sees it, and knows exactly who’s been in her apartment.

Natasha still doesn’t understand the cultural obsession with accumulating trinkets, the never-ending need for _things_ and the value placed upon them, but she loves the vase because it’s from Phil.

Maybe that’s entirely the point.

**_End_ **


End file.
